FILE PHOTO: A U.S. Justice Department logo or seal showing Justice Department headquarters, known as "Main Justice," is seen behind the podium in the Department's headquarters briefing room before a news conference with the Attorney General in Washington, January 24, 2023. REUTERS/Kevin Lamarque/File Photo

By Jonathan Stempel

(Reuters) -The U.S. government sued the Los Angeles County sheriff's department on Tuesday, accusing it of violating the Constitution by being far too slow to process licenses for people who want to carry concealed weapons.

In a complaint filed in Los Angeles federal court, the Department of Justice said the sheriff's department has systematically denied Californians' Second Amendment rights through a "deliberate pattern of unconscionable delay."

According to the Justice Department, license applications in Los Angeles County typically sit nine months before being reviewed, and some applicants wait more than two years before being interviewed.

"The Second Amendment protects the fundamental constitutional right of law-abiding citizens to bear arms," Attorney General Pam Bondi said in a statement.

"Los Angeles County may not like that right, but the Constitution does not allow them to infringe upon it," she added. Sheriff Robert Luna was also named as a defendant.

In a statement on Tuesday night, the sheriff's department said it respected the Second Amendment, and believed that despite "significant staffing shortages" its practices haven't deprived individuals of their rights.

The department said it has issued more than 5,000 concealed carry permits in 2025, including 2,722 new applications, and is issuing permits "at a significantly increased rate, contrary to the statistics and information cited" in the complaint.

LONG WAITS

While Republican President Donald Trump's administration is regularly at odds with California officials and has a broad view of Second Amendment gun rights, Tuesday's lawsuit focuses more on bureaucratic issues than on policy differences.

According to the complaint, the Los Angeles sheriff's department received 3,982 applications for new concealed carry licenses between January 2024 and March 2025 but approved just two. Los Angeles County had about 9.7 million people in 2023.

The complaint also said the average wait time to start processing applications is 281 days, violating a California law requiring initial reviews within 90 days. Some applications sit as long as 1,030 days, or about 34 months, it said.

Lawyers in the Justice Department's civil rights division and the office of U.S. Attorney Bill Essayli in Los Angeles began investigating the sheriff's department in March.

Their lawsuit seeks a permanent injunction requiring the sheriff's department to issue concealed carry licenses in a timely manner, and in compliance with the law.

The case is U.S. v. Los Angeles County Sheriff's Department, U.S. District Court, Central District of California, No. 25-09323.

(Reporting by Jonathan Stempel in New York; Editing by Franklin Paul, Edmund Klamann and Lincoln Feast.)